Setting Up Account Hierarchies

To set up account hierarchies, you create parent-child relationships between accounts. The following is a list of guidelines for creating account hierarchies:

Accounts can have an unlimited number of child accounts.

Accounts can have only one parent account.

There is no limit to the number of levels you can establish within an account hierarchy.

Accounts can be defined as Buying Groups (an attribute flag of account).

Accounts can have an unlimited number of product categories and products associated with them.

Each account can have only one profile (based on Account Type).

An account can have unlimited associated assessments, and assessments can have many assessment values.

If your company uses the Sales Volume Planning module, you must create one contiguous account hierarchy with all the accounts to be included in the sales volume planning process. For instance, you might create a five-level hierarchy with your corporate headquarters at the top level, and your company's divisions at the second level. You could place the accounts representing all of your customers' headquarters offices in the third level. Distribution centers would be in the fourth level and retail outlets in the fifth level.